CSR for the charity sector? We need a system where charities can acknowledge their wider benefits on society

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is now so part and parcel of the way most companies operate in the UK. Imagine if, similarly, every charity had a strategic goal to go beyond their core remit and support their community in some further way?

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is now so part and parcel of the way most companies operate in the UK. Imagine if, similarly, every charity had a strategic goal to go beyond their core remit and support their community in some further way?

Brexit has shown that there are huge fault lines in public values in the UK. We have also seen that British society has continued to change and diversify over the last decade, bringing with it a broader mix of cultures and a more pluralistic understanding of our national life. While diversity has the potential to bring so many positives to British society, for many 2017 was seen as a year where we were living in a ‘divided Britain’.

In November I went to NCVO’s annual Hinton lecture, where Baroness Warsi spoke of the importance of bringing more connection into our communities. She was asked what role charities can play in bringing divided communities together. Baroness Warsi stressed the importance of the simple actions that physically bring people together, such as coffee mornings, shared meals, and community gardening.

I agree that charities are well placed to bring communities together. So how can this be achieved in practical terms? Should charities take this on as their responsibility? And how can we encourage charities to acknowledge the impact of their work in the broadest sense?

Most charities are already contributing to community cohesion

Many organisations are specifically working on improving community cohesion. For example, the Jo Cox Foundation 'Great Get Together' street parties in 2017 had the aim of bringing communities and neighbours together through shared meals and street parties.

There are also so many organisations that have a side-mission of community cohesion, or where it is a ‘by-product’ of their work. For example, Foodcycle is an organisation that brings together people from all backgrounds to share a meal together, at the same time as reducing food waste and food poverty. There is also The Challenge; they deliver the National Citizens Service, where young people from all walks of life are encouraged to participate.

Another often overlooked way charities bring people together is through their campaigning and fundraising work. nfpSynergy conducted research last year with members of the public who have taken part in fundraising events. One interviewee commented that social cohesion was a by-product of taking part in fundraising events:
“we do lots of community events where people physically come and share time with each other, and I think (its) very good for social cohesion generally.”

Charities should be recognised more for the work they are doing in this area. I would love to better understand how much charities shine a light on the work they do beyond their core mission to support community cohesion and whether they set any strategic objectives in these areas.

Lack of funding and continuing austerity means charities may find it hard to justify being seen to work outside of their core mission

The big challenge is that charities have to ultimately show that they are meeting their key strategic goals. The expectations charities’ stakeholders have for them to deliver against their mission are valid and ultimately are the priority.

A charity version of CSR could be the solution

I’m sure some critics would say that charities don’t need CSR, because the nature of their work means they are already doing enough to benefit society. However if CSR is about good citizenship then of course charities should do the same as companies, and failing to do so means falling short of their responsibilities to their staff, volunteers and to wider society.

Some decisions would need to be made on what charity CSR would look like. For example, encouraging workforce diversity, payroll giving and volunteering days for staff may all transfer well into a charity setting from the corporate world. Whereas a charity spending money to fundraise for a cause that is not it’s own may not go down well with its donors.

While every charity would need to decide what CSR would mean for them in practice, there would be value in having a universally-recognised way for charities to speak freely about their impact on community cohesion and wider society. In doing so there could be more recognition of, and support for, the role of charities in helping unite our divided Britain.

6 Comments

If only it were true that most companies took CSR seriously! Most companies (about 99%) are SMEs to whom the term 'corporate' in 'CSR' is a real turn-off, but that doesn't mean they don't engage in the community around them. Usually SME engagement is non-strategic and reactive rather than an expression of the company's mission. Even amongst those companies that do practice CSR many do so in ways which are superficial, transitory and often focused too much on the benefits to the company (effective team building, for example) rather than on the beneficiary. And there's an unspoken attitude in too many charities which says 'you want to do more good? Do some unpaid overtime.' For larger employers, charities included, there's a real opportunity to develop and deliver a purpose which will unite, drive and motivate staff and impress customers (donors, clients), clearly to the benefit of the organisation. Fiona's right - employers in whatever sector can be doing more good in local communities than they do today but it's only when they plan for this strategically, driven by mission and a commitment to ethical, responsible and sustainable practices and backed by a business case, that they make a real difference.

As always, I have enjoyed reading this and other articles posted to me - thank you! My comment is that companies really do need ot see themselves as an important component in community cohesion and one way to do this is to support their local charity by
1. finding money for charities they feel they want to support
2. make a 5 year committment to a partnership with their chosen charity
3. use that tinme to learn about their chosen charity and involve their staff in the charity and apply their business expertise to help that charity become more effective
Best wishes for the New Year
Mark

I run a C.I.C. called DropPoint that works with charities, and we have just launched programme to enable online retailers to use our platform as a CSR tool. It could also easily be used by other charities in the same manor
https://DropPoint.org/csr

Extremely thought-provoking, thanks for airing this, Fiona. Charities can be guilty of putting themselves in silos, only seeing the remit of their particular cause and not looking for wider connections. Whilst chief exec of an environmental charity, I led the development of its social inclusion project which aimed to make its projects far more inclusive of those from socially excluded and disadvantaged backgrounds. The staff were very anxious about this (me included) as we were ecologists without skills to work with these groups of people. Careful management of the programme led a highly successful end result and staff still consider the work, which has continued every since, as one of the most important things the organisation does.

Certainly, from the suggestions above, many charities could usefully put some ideas together about what they are already doing and how that could be packaged and enhanced.
I like the idea of using the same term CSR because it is well known and although for charities, the content will be slightly different as you suggest, there are already usable models on which to build some very functional and beneficial structures.
There must be some functional way, for example, for some charities to enable some get togethers on days that do not have specific celebrations while normal charities that serve older people are having Christmas break. Apart from Sundays and Christmas day there was nothing social where I (age 82) could serve or meet-up from 15 Dec to 4th Jan apart from the ploughman's/social walk/games that I arranged ... with minimal take-up. It has been like this for several years now.

An interesting and thought provoking article. Whilst I agree with the initial sentiment of the article and the thoughts about a 'charity CSR', there needs to be a better understanding in both the third sector and private sector of what CSR is and how it is evolving yearly? The corporate sector uses CSR as a wide brush and new terms such as Skills-based-Volunteering and Corporate Social Value have entered the market int he last 12-18 months to makeup CSR initiatives and reports. Some companies are going as far as to include Sustainability to their CSR with the inclusion of Health & Safety. If charities are to go down a 'CSR' route, I think there needs to be a discussion working backwards from how to evaluated real and long social and community impact to the question of what is our CSR strategy and should it include Sustainability, Volunteering, Fundraising, Health and Safety, etc. before the third sector runs away with using generic charity CSR programmes.